Re: [Summary-Talk] Incremental config lockdown

[Richard McLean <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 8:14 PM -0400 11/6/06, Jason Linhart wrote:
>Changing settings in incremental mode is possible, by directly editing
>the configuration file by hand, but we don't recommend or support doing
>so. The result of such changes is that log entries processed before the
>change are based on the old settings, and those processed after the
>change will be based on the new settings.


Ah, that's good to hear. That's a workable solution.


>Do that a couple of times and there won't be any way to keep track
>of what your results mean.


That really depends on the change. I can't really think of one offhand
that would invalidate all previous results or corrupt new ones, given
that the client knows that the change is only reflected on results after
the config change has been made (a quick one paragraph email to that
effect is all that is needed for the vast majority of our clients to
understand the implications).

I'm glad that it's only the GUI that's locked, at least then we have the
option to make a change that the client requests with the one caveat
of it not applying to previous months, rather than only giving them
the option of losing all their current stats.


>If we kept enough information to be able to recalculate what the results
>of configuration changes should be retroactively on already processed
>log entries then the Summary database would have to be larger than the
>original log files. Some of our competition do exactly that. We figure
>it is simpler to just keep the old log files and keep Summary's database
>relatively small.


Happy with the choice to keep the database quick and small, it only
applying to future processing is fine for what we're looking to do.

I realise that the GUI is locked to "idiot-proof" the process, but is 
there any chance of having an option added to unlock it? Perhaps via a
switch in the config file itself, rather than in the GUI, or in the GUI 
with a couple of "Are you sure?" "Are you really sure?" dialogs that 
spell out that it's not recommended to make changes to incremental
configurations? Or even an "Unlock this page" button to enable it on
group of settings at a time?


>I can imagine situations where it would be nice to run some sub-reports
>in incremental mode and others in regular mode. I will add this request
>to our wish list.


Great, thanks!

-- 

cheers,
Richard

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